We are led from all signs to infer that the meeting-place of all the lines of God's providential work on earth is very near. I do not prophesy; I do not foretell; I only forthtell what God has said; but I do feel there is to be a time unprecedented since the beginning—portentous, startling and terrible to the enemies of God; but glorious, holy, and full of joyous scenes to the people of God. For in the midst of this the people of God are safe; they are enclosed in everlasting arms; the shield of Omnipotence is over them. They may pass through a sharp night, but it will be a short one. Oh what a solemn position do we occupy! We stand on an isthmus washed by the waves of time, and wasted by the waters of eternity. It seems now but the suspensive pause before the shock comes. A sure and glorious termination reconciles us to the pressure. Into a holy and happy, and blessed land, the surf of the troubled present rolls; and our weary hearts will leap to that land as a babe leaps to its mother's bosom.—Late Dr. Cumming. Although we have advocated the popular theory ourselves, the common belief that there will be a conversion of all nations to the faith of Christ, and a state of universal peace and holiness throughout the world, for the space of a thousand years before the second advent of our Lord, is, to our view now, utterly irreconcilable with what the Scriptures teach,—Rt. Rev. J. P. Henshaw. Are we among the penitent, believing, and holy ones, who are looking for, and hastening unto the coming of our Lord, or are we among the impatient and unholy, who will ‘wail because of him.’—Ibid. Jesus will reign in visible glory among his saints upon the earth. He has now as regards his visible presence gone to receive to himself a kingdom, and return. When the appointed hour arrives, the Son of man shall appear in his glory, and all his holy angels with him. To this blessed kingdom of the Son of God multiplied prophecies of the Scriptures bid us look forward continually; and it is our blessed privilege to live in unceasing expectation of this happy day, when angel voices shall thus announce to his waiting Zion, “Thy God reigneth.”—Stephen H. Tyng, D. D. “Hope is a prophetic grace; and as faith gets more genuine and distinct, hope will grow more active and sustaining. When faith’s backward gaze on the bright obscure of Calvary is clear and strong, then hope’s prospective glance penetrates into Heaven itself, with animating expectations of the day when He shall ‘rend the heavens and come down.’”